Places that Matter

Big Pun Mural

Place Matters Profile

Graffiti mural of Bronx-born Big Pun, the first Puerto Rican hip hop artist to go platinum. The mural was made by local aerosol artists, Tats Cru, who were also his friends. Each year on his birthday, they change the mural slightly.

At the corner of Rogers Place and Westchester Avenue in the Longwood section of the Bronx near the elevated train platform of the Intervale train station is a mural honoring the late hip hop MC Big Punisher (Big Pun). Bronx native Christopher Ríos took the name of Big Pun after being noticed for his MC abilities buy another local Bronx hip hop hero, Fat Joe. His first album, Capital Punishment was released in 1998 and went platinum within months. He was also the first Puerto Rican hip hop star to obtain commercial success and his popularity helped to bring recognition to the role of Puerto Ricans in the development of hip hop. He died of a heart attack on February 7th, 2000, a couple of months before the release of his second album, Yeeeah Baby!.

The mural of Big Pun was created by Tats Cru, a local aerosol art collective at The Point in Hunts Point, who also happened to know the singer personally. Each year on the anniversary of his passing, members of Tats Cru redo the mural creating a slightly different mural every year. The mural always features an image of Big Pun surrounded by symbols that reflect his life and career--sometimes symbols of the Bronx, thereby connecting him to this neighborhood; sometimes his name created out of platinum bars--signifying his importance as the first Puerto Rican MC to reach platinum record sales.

Since the early 1990s Tats Cru has created almost 120 RIP murals. Tats Cru is made up of predominantly South Bronx natives (and a couple of graffiti artists from Europe as well) who started their careers painting subway trains in the 1980s. Now they work internationally creating murals for private and commercial businesses.

Memorial walls grew out of the tradition in Latin American and other Catholic countries where crosses or other memorials are placed at the site where a person died. The memorials remind passersby to pray for that person because according to Catholic beliefs a person who died suddenly or violently and hadn’t received last rites will languish in Purgatory. By praying for them they are aided on their way to Heaven.

The memorial walls or RIP murals in New York City incorporate graffiti aesthetics (though unlike graffiti tagging the name of the graffiti artist is not the emphasis of the piece, but the name of the deceased is) and like the roadside memorials they are used to honor loved ones. A wall is selected because it is near a place where the deceased died, lived, or hung out. In the late 1980s and 1990s memorials walls sprung up throughout the City in response to an era filled with AIDS, and rising drug and violence in the City’s neighborhoods. It was also during this time that graffiti artists were driven from the subways, their preferred canvases, to use the walls of buildings instead.

The walls themselves serve as more than just pictures, they become sites for a type of street theater. While the walls are being created it is not uncommon for neighborhood residents to watch the artists at their work, or family members may come by to share their stories of the deceased with the artists. The murals include many cultural and religious symbols and objects that speak to things relevant or significant in that person’s life. The images affirm that the deceased was part of the community and their loss is not only a loss to the family but to the community as a whole. Afterwards, the walls become the backdrop for shrines and altars left with candles, photos, flowers left by neighborhood members and passersby.

And around the City it is more common now to see memorial walls go up when a celebrity (usually with some ties to the community) passes away like Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and Tupac Shakur. But in the early 1990s a lot of Tats Cru’s work came from memorial walls for neighborhood members. Wilfredo Feliciano (Bio) remembers: "I would say from '94 to about '98 there was a flood of memorial walls. We may have done 100 murals just memorial walls. Doing two or three a month. And I think it was just a reflection of what was going on in the City at that time and also the neighborhood, because you were going out there painting and there was a lot of violence, a lot of stuff going on, and the memorials came as a result of that.

They finally decided not to do so many because it is an emotionally draining experience. Initially there was some resistance to the creation of these murals amongst neighborhood members (and still among the NYPD), but members of Tats Cru felt they served a need in the community: "And we felt useful at the time. These people were not movie stars, they were not famous people but they were loved, they had a family who loved them. So there is no reason whey they shouldn't be remembered in the neighborhood where they were from."

Ms. Nicole Rodriguez, sister of the late Christopher "Big Pun" Rios, embarks on a journey to fulfill the dream of herself and the fans of one of the greatest to touch the mic. Ms. Rodriguez is committed to having the name of Rogers Place near 163rd in the Bronx changed to her brother's name. Nicole shares that BIG PUN was a "True New Yorker" who loved where he was from, and loved his people. With all of the opportunities to leave his home town, he refused, and chose to stay close to his roots. Rogers Place and 163rd has become a place where locals and tourists come to pay homage and show respect to one of their beloved own. (February, 2011)